After putting an install image onto a drive, there is no space in the filesystem for files. Later, trying to put another larger iso image onto the same drive shows insufficient space on the entire drive. However the drive itself is much larger than the image files.

The drives become locked at the smaller capacity of the iso image. How can I reset them?

A USB drive does not "brick", you seem to have tried to write data to it which exceeds it's size. As far as the situation where the drive now matches the iso file size, you can expand the partitions.

Note that if a drive says it is 4 gig, that's not a guarantee, so if you have a 4 gig image, it may exceed the drive available space.

Perhaps you can share the sizes of the drive and the files you are trying to write to it.

Also please share the commands or application you're using to write this drive.

Note also that you can use partition utilities like fdisk and gparted to inspect and clear, plus setup drive partitions, including adjusting their sizes.

More information is needed to be able to help you further.

Ok. I'm using 16GB drives. The image files are typically no larger than 4GB. dd if=distro.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M

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Use gparted to resize the partition to the size of the drive.

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The install image is a hybrid ISO i.e. ISO9660 filesystem which is basically a CD/DVD that can run from a USB drive. By definition an ISO9660 filesystem is read only. Since the flash drive is basically a DVD image it will look exactly like a real optical drive with the same size.

To "restore" the flash drive you need to use gparted or any partition tool to delete the partition table and create a new one.

To add files to the image it needs to be remastered.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Modify/CD

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Does the result boot? If so, use gparted to expand that partition to the max size. Need help with that?

Ok, I've succeeded in re-partitioning (and theorising how I got it into my head that this wouldn't work).

Adding install files to the image is interesting, but maybe another time.. I'm looking at using the repositories.

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One thing to keep in mind with dd -- The output file will always be the exact copy of the input, complete with partition table if appropriate; and regardless of the physical details of the destination.

"After putting an install image onto a drive, there is no space in the filesystem for files."
Yes, typically on first review. However the remaining space could be used.

If a new iso using dd failed and then gparted works it could be some oddity of the drive/controller/locked geometry??

I've seen flash drives where you have to play with them a bit with other tools.

Flash drives seem to suffer in that they don't always work like a hard drive might.

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